With the Battle for Zendikar pre-release on the horizon the most asked question on the internet is “what do I do with my cards from the pre-release?”  There are a few groupings of cards and only a few things that can happen with cards.  Some cards go up, some cards go down, and some cards stay the same.  That’s pretty obvious, right?  What do we do to figure this out?

Mythic Rares

Mythics usually fall into 1 of two camps.  Either they’re over-priced and going to slowly dip starting shortly after the release of the set, or they’re priced correctly and will spike as soon as demand increases.  You should look to trade away all mythics you don’t intend to use in your decks the weekend of the pre-release or the weekend after the Pro Tour.  Some flashier mythics like planeswalkers can see steep spikes the weekend of the Pro Tour if they see a lot of camera time. Personally, I’ll be looking to hold Gideon, Kiora, Ob Nixilis, Undergrowth Champion, Drana, Ulamog, and Oblivion Sower until after the weekend of the Pro Tour.  I’ll be pretty excited if I can trade my Part the Waterveil, Akoum Firebird, and non-foil copies of Omnath, Locus of Rage at the pre-release.  These mythics have little upside from their current pre-order prices.  If you are not Pucatrading, you should look into it!  You can sign up for it through my referral link here.  Although your local play group might not have a guy that collects phoenixes, there are plenty of people on Pucatrade that will be happy to receive your Akoum Firebird.

Bulk Rares

Generally anything less than $1 is the kind of bargain bin stuff you’ll not need to keep.  For every sub $1 card that you keep past the pre-release instead of trading it for $0.50 – $0.75 worth of value is one more you are likely to only be able to sell for $0.11 to a buylist.  There are some exceptions to this idea, but generally you will lose a lot more if you hold these cards than you miss out if you don’t.

Low range rares $1-4

Some of these are criminally under-priced.  Do you remember Hangarback Walker’s pre-order price? $1.99 at most online stores.  Occasionally these cards can break out and become a force in standard but I like to trade them away because their price point likely can’t be sustained after the release date.  I recommend trying to pick them up in December for $0.50-$1 each.  Again, Pucatrade is a great way to spend your Monday after the pre-release to get some value from your winnings.

High end Rares $5-10

A lot of these cards are likely to become format staples.  Right now, the only cards in this category are Ruinous Path (our Hero’s Downfall replacement), and lands.  Lots and lots of lands.  There are 7 dual lands and they’re all probably going to go spike once new decks start showing up but they will level out just like temples.  I expect most of these cards to movement during the Pro Tour weekend so at this point they aren’t a terrible thing to pre-order for your week 1 standard deck.  I wouldn’t want to trade these cards until the weekend of the Pro Tour.

Power Uncommons

Most of the $0.75-$1.50 uncommons will be valuable until they get printed as a FNM promo.  I would either trade them away immediately or hold them until Pro Tour weekend.  I’m really interested in picking up people’s extra copies of Crumble to Dust, Retreat to Coralhelm, Trangress the Mind, Statis Snare, Titan’s Presence, Zulaport Cutthroat, and Herald of Kozilek.

Foils

Foils can very hit or miss.  Honestly, if you find anyone interested in trading for your foils at a reasonable price it’s hard to fault you for getting rid of them.  There are a lot of foils that will not maintain their price (usually on mythic rares) after Magic Online redemption starts.  Standard legal foils are also a lot less likely to move up with the same speed and multiplier on standard only cards.  This is pretty evident on a card like Deathmist Raptor which at the time of this article has a fair trade price of $21.08 for non-foil copies, but only a price of $30.98 for foils.  A meager 1.5x multiplier on a foil Mythic Rare does not reflect the actual rarity of the card.  It is strictly a product of the extremely low demand for foils.  Cards that generally carry much higher multipliers are legendary creatures and lands.  If the multiplier on that foil you open is especially low you can consider holding it.

Pre-Release Foils

There are going to be a ton of different pre-release promo foils this time.  Every rare in the set is eligible for a foil printing.  This means less impact on the set version of the card but some of these pre-release foils are going to be extraordinarily rare.  I would hang onto any Mythic pre-release foil as there are a lot of collectors that will want it.  I know many people that collect every promo and some that only collect every pre-release promo.  Their has become a lot harder these last few years but they persevere.   I personally was able to trade a pre-release copy of Alhammarret, High Arbiter for $3 on Pucatrade.  That’s a ton for a card that is as bulk as bulk gets and has a $1 foil price.

Zendikar Expeditions

Yeah I know, you were all waiting for this at the end of the article, right?  Zendikar Expeditions are going to absolutely rock your local pre-release.  The first guy that opens it is going to hoot and holler and it will be a spectacle to see!  But what do you do after the initial shock wears off and it’s sitting in a perfect fit in your binder?  Honestly, I don’t know.  I would keep tabs on twitter and see how people are reacting to the surprise.  We don’t have enough information on store pricing or availability and we have no idea how common or rare they are.  A lot of theory crafting has gone into predicting the price but it won’t mean anything if our assumptions are wrong.  The only way to find out if they are correct is to open booster packs!  Personally, I will be looking at twitter and trying to gauge how often they are being opened.  If it seems like there are 2 or more per pre-release event, it may be time to dump them quickly.  If we hear about entire stores not opening a single one, well then it’s time to frame that beauty and put it on the mantle.  Zendikar Expeditions I expect will be the quickest moving commodity this weekend and the only way to stay ahead is to stay online.

Have you ever wondered how some cards, despite their rarity, are so out of line with cards from recent sets of the same rarity?  Some of Modern’s biggest offenders are below.

The Pre-Mythic Age (Mirrodin through Shadowmoor)

These cards are from the earliest stages of Modern’s history.  I would refer to this as the “Pre-Mythic Age.” Mirrodin through Shadowmoor has the lowest print amounts of any Modern-legal Magic cards.  Despite this fact, the absence of Mythic rares means there are generally more rares than you would expect from that set.  This means that even despite Vedelkan Shackles being reprinted as a Mythic in Modern Masters, it is still relatively easy to find.

What happens to these types of cards when they get reprinted?  Well look at Smash to Smithereens.  It was strictly a sideboard card that cost over $5.50 as a common!  What happens when it’s reprinted twice in one calendar year?  Well it’s worth basically nothing.  Despite the fact that Modern Masters 2015 was a very limited print run, more copies of Smash to Smithereens were printed in that set than probably in all of Shadowmoor.

Another issue we have with older cards is they’re just lost.  There are probably people that have 20-30 copies of smash to smithereens in some box they never look in.  If a card goes up gradually over the course of a year (Smash went from ~ $1.50 to $4 in 12 months), people don’t notice it.  This is a reason why sometimes, spikes in price are good.  Quick price corrections cause people to dig up “lost supply” and reintroduce it to the market.  This helps undo some of the damage from a spike if the supply is high enough.

The First Post-Mythic Golden Age (Shards of Alara through Rise of the Eldrazi)

There have been a few sets that are heralded as the start of “Golden Ages” in Magic.  There were a few in particular that brought Magic back from the brink of extinction but usually did not last long.  Rather ironically, the short Golden age periods were during gold themed sets.  Invasion and Ravnica blocks are often pointed as significant to bring players back into the fold.  Finally, we’ve reached a kind of equilibrium that brings players back into the game for good.  Shards of Alara starts this first post-mythic Golden Age.  As players return to the game after a rather unpopular block, much more product is opened than usual.  As you might expect, cards from these sets (which were printed up to 7 years ago) are much easier to find and cost less.  There are still some standouts because the player base has had 7 years to grow!

Terminate is a recent example of a card that was obscure but once demand increases it can very quickly out strip supply, even of a common. But still, as you can see, reprinting a card can still end up bringing it out of the stratosphere.  Relic of Progenitus was reprinted at a higher rarity in Modern Masters and yet still lost 60% of it’s value.  Cards from these sets can usually support casual play but strong Modern demand sends them through the roof.

As we get toward the end of this Golden Age, it becomes a lot harder for most commons to keep up large price tags.  Worldwake‘s Dispel has never been more than $0.50 despite it’s popularity.

New Age Design (Scars of Mirrodin through Avacyn Restored)

These two blocks dictate a lot of the trends that would follow into more recent sets.  With Scars of Mirrodin players are now expecting to return to previous planes and get reprints from that block.  Scars of Mirrodin, despite only having 1 reprint at rare or mythic (Mind Slaver), showed that nostalgia fueled sets were coming and reprints could happen.  This was later a cause of the huge suppression of the prices of Zendikar fetch lands.  People now expect to return to old planes and they expect some new and some old of what they know.  These two blocks also prove the theory that later sets are opened much less than fall sets.  There is only 1 common in Scars of Mirrodin worth more than $1 (Ichor Claw Myr), none in Mirrodin Besieged, and 1 in New Phyrexia (Gitaxian Probe).  Once we go to higher rarities, New Phyrexia is by far the most expensive set despite the reprints.  Avacyn Restored similarly beats out Innistrad and Dark Ascension.

The Second Golden Age (Return to Ravnica through Battle for Zendikar)

You know, Mirrodin left a bad taste in some people’s mouths.  It wasn’t received well the first time and the 2nd time it brought together one of the worst marriages in recent standard (Jace, the Mindsculptor, Stoneforge Mystic, Sword of Feast and Famine, and later Batterskull).  But you know what really get’s people’s gears going? Ravnica.  You know what people love? Guilds.  Do you know how much they love them? Enough to explain them in terms of cows.  Return to Ravnica had 10 high profile reprints in the most precious Modern shock lands.  This leads people to bust insane numbers of booster packs for these expensive reprints.  People are a lot more likely to boosters when they know good cards are in them.

So what does this all mean?  Cards that have been reprinted infinity-million times are still worth money.  That is true, there is one other factor to consider, playability.

This graph is skewed a bit by Magic Online but should be a good jumping off point to make my point.  Lightning Bolt has been printed 13 times.  13 times and it’s still $2!

Yeah, some of the printings really don’t count.  The combined number of sleeve playable Alpha, Beta, and promo Lightning Bolts is so small they don’t have an effect on other printing’s prices.  What is notable is Lightning Bolt was a common in both M10 and M11 and an uncommon in Modern Masters 2015 but still commands a $2 price tag.  When 4 copies of a card is played in 42% of decks it doesn’t matter how many times it has been printed as much.  Serum Visions is only present in 21% of decks and commands a price point six times higher despite being half as popular.

But Lightning Bolt can’t be the only card like that, right?

Path to Exile’s first printing was during Conflux, the first post-mythic golden age.  Since then it has been reprinted in a booster set once (Modern Masters) as well as available in 3 supplementary products and 2 promo printings.  That should be a lot of copies, right?  Path to Exile still commands a $9 price tag.  But we can see from this graph that it didn’t always exist like that.  After it’s reprint in Modern Masters it was available for almost half as much as it costs now.  When cards are reprinted in limited runs, it is imperative you buy in quickly because prices are often suppressed by players worried about a reprint.

With this information I hope you can figure out why a card is expensive.  It might be due to scarcity (Smash to Smithereens), playability (Lightning Bolt), or a combination of both (Serum Visions) and knowing how a reprint will affect it’s price accordingly.

So you’ve seen this beauty right?  Noah Bradley (one of my personal favorite artists) has some new lands in the next set… and a half?  This Steam Vents art is being used for the “full” art lands in Zendikar Expeditions.  

What is Zendikar Expeditions?

Let’s start out and dispel anything myths about this set.  I see too much misinformation being passed around.

• Zendikar Expeditions (henceforth abbreviated as ZE), is a set of 45 cards that is not part of Battle for Zendikar or Oath of the Gatewatch sets but will be found in their booster packs.
• There you can open 25 of the ZE cards in Battle for Zendikar.  These 25 cards are the 10 shock lands (Steam Vents, Godless Shrine, Overgrown Tomb, etc), the 10 fetch lands (Scalding Tarn, Marsh Flats, Polluted Delta, etc), and the 5 new Battle for Zendikar dual lands.
• We do not have any confirmation on what the next 20 cards, available in Oath of the Gatewatch, will be.  They may not even be lands.  There is no information available about them outside of the fact that there are 20. (Note: This is incorrect, Matt Tilling in the comments linked the correction – here – They are all lands)
• The rarity of a ZE card is approximately slightly lower than the rate of opening a foil Mythic rare.  This is very roughly approximately 1 per case (6 boxes) of Battle for Zendikar.
• ZE cards are NOT legal in Standard.  They ARE legal in limited if you open them in a draft or a sealed pool.
• ZE cards are not able to be redeemed on Magic Online, but they will be available to be opened.
• ZE cards will be available throughout the entire print cycle of Battle for Zendikar.  This is unlike the treasures found in original Zendikar packs which were supposedly only available in the first print run.
• ZE cards will be expensive.

Well now that we got that out of the way, what does that mean for players?  Well, a lot.  It means pre-ordering almost any card in Battle for Zendikar is a losing proposition.  It’s clear people will open obscene amounts of this product and have far more copies of most cards than they will ever need.  It also means that the price of cards from this set will quickly bottom out.  If you read my article a few weeks ago, Grinder Finance – Winter is Coming, you will know how I feel about card prices for the fall set.  Battle for Zendikar is going to continue the tradition of the fall set being the “most opened set of all time” and more because of Zendikar Expeditions.  If people are really hyped to buy cases of product to ensure opening a Zendikar Expedition card then it will drive the price of opened product down.

What’s the plan for this pre-order season?  Well it’s pretty simple.  Don’t buy anything you don’t plan on using in the first week of Battle for Zendikar Standard.  Don’t buy all of the lands.  Don’t buy the sweet new Omnath for your EDH deck.  Don’t buy bulk rares and hope they spike.  There will be cards that go up.  It’s inevitable that some things will spike the weekend of the Pro Tour.  However, the reality is if you can wait until late December, you will find that card prices absolutely plummet.  Right now most websites have the new Battle for Zendikar dual lands pre-ordering for about $40 for a playset.  These duals might be a little stronger than Theros block scry lands, but even the most expensive scry lands were only $8-10 at their peak.  The scry lands that were in Theros were always the least expensive because of the sheer number that were opened.

All of the temples, regardless of how playable they were, exhibited the same dip at the end of December.  You could have saved 30% to 50% on these lands if you waited until their low points to buy them.  In fact, only one of the lands even went up from it’s pre-order price after release.  I expect a similar thing to happen with the Battle for Zendikar dual lands.

There will probably be one that increases a little in price as it is in top decks, but the rest will likely see a steady decrease in price until the new year.

Battle for Zendikar Mythic Rares

Don’t buy them now unless you absolutely need them.  I can’t imagine a world where Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger continues to stay at or above it’s current $20-25 price tag. Look at what happened to Khans of Tarkir mythic rares.

Pre-order prices were conservative.  Cards were then released.  The mythic rares that got played on the Pro Tour saw a huge spike and then ever since they have just been on a downward spiral.  Do you know what the top 10 most expensive cards are in Khans of Tarkir?  Polluted Delta, Flooded Strand, Wooded Foothills, Bloodstained Mire, Windswept Heath, See the Unwritten, Sorin Solemn Visitor, Dig Through Time, Anafenza the Foremost, and Sarkhan the Dragonspeaker.  You know what’s importantly missing from this list?  Cards that see a ton of play in Standard!  Siege Rhino isn’t even the 11th most expensive card!  Monastery Swiftspear beats out almost every Mythic and Rare in the set because of it’s eternal play.

With Battle for Zendikar looking to be the world heavy weight champion of the “most opened set in Magic history”, I don’t like pre-ordering any of the cards.  Right now, I think it is time to shore up your collection with cards from Magic Origins. 

With these two cards seeing play in Legacy and Modern, there is likely not going to a reprieve for their price point.  Jace might not see a ton of Standard play but his pack foil is as of this writing, a minimum of $80 on TCG player.  That’s a sign there is strong eternal demand from players who intend to keep him in their deck long term.  I know I called him a sell a few weeks ago, but I did not see him becoming a force in Eternal formats.  Eventually it’s time to tap out and realize that this is clearly not a hype train.  Sustained growth for 2 months is a sign of a card poised to carry a lot of the weight of a set.

Hangarback Walker is the single most underrated card in the set on release.  It’s deceptively flexible and people were too worried about over paying for all of it’s effects.  What’s clear is this is no Chronomaton.  With it showing up in Vintage shops, Legacy Mud, and Modern’s Affinity, it’s hard to point to a reason this won’t be a twenty dollar bill for the foreseeable future.  With people scraping every penny they can find together for Battle for Zendikar, it is safe to say that supply on Magic Origins cards is near it’s peak.  I can’t see a reason to wait to buy in at this point.

After coming down from it’s brief $11 price point, Languish is a card to keep an eye on.  If we see a lot of Allies that have less than 4 toughness, this may quickly find itself a home in many decks.  It also does a pretty decent job cleaning up Hangarback Walker scraps.  I don’t know if it will drop more before the release of Battle for Zendikar but it’s important to keep it on your radar.  If it starts to turn after the first week of post Zendikar SCG opens, you may want to buy in.